


Nine Tenths of the Law

by sneakertime



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 12:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6153616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sneakertime/pseuds/sneakertime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When it comes to Peter, Gamora slowly begins to realise that she has a possessive streak a mile wide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine Tenths of the Law

Gamora was not unfamiliar with the social conventions surrounding romantic attachments. She knew herself to be an attractive woman – at least by the general standards of bipedal humanoids. Her face was largely symmetrical, she had no especially disfiguring injuries, and her body was at the very peak of physical fitness.

She’d understood for a long time that her attractiveness could be used as a tool. It was a way of exploiting the weaknesses of others in order to attain her goals. A flirtatious smile here, a heated glance there… and the foolish would drop their guards in an instant.

On occasion, she might have to try a little harder. She’d learnt to be adept at that too. She could flirt both subtly and outrageously, engage in overt public displays of affection, and keep up the pretence of sexual interest during even the most boring and inane of conversations.

It wasn’t fun. If anything, it was an irritation. But, ultimately, still preferable to needlessly shedding blood.

She’d had sex of course. It was very enjoyable. She hadn’t been particularly attached to any of the men involved, besides finding them all physically desirable. Most importantly, it had always been on her own terms. No sentimentality, no personal questions, and once they parted ways they stayed parted. Most of her brief liaisons had been more than happy with those terms.

Jealousy wasn’t a foreign concept to her either. In fact, she’d felt it often. Especially when she saw families together. She envied them bitterly, and hated Thanos all over again for stealing hers from her. She was jealous of people who’d been allowed to be children, who’d hung on to their innocence, who hadn’t been forged into living weapons before they were even fully grown.

She hadn’t realised there were other kinds, other _flavours_ of jealousy, until she looked across a dirty bar on some backwoods mining moon, and saw a girl running her hand seductively up Peter’s arm.

The first mad - and completely irrational - thought that seized Gamora was – how _dare_ she? The ferocity of the feeling was overwhelming. With some difficultly she got a hold of herself, violently smothering the urge to take up the knife hidden in her boot and sever the hand that had now strayed to Peter’s neck - where it was playing flirtatiously with the fabric of his collar.

Peter was clearly reciprocating the girl’s interest. He had his hips angled towards her, and that stupid, dopey smile that he thought was so charming was plastered all over his face. As Gamora watched he leaned in close to the woman and whispered something in her ear. She laughed, and then leaned in closer still, head angled upwards, clearly intending to kiss him.

Gamora was halfway across the crowded bar before her brain caught up with her body’s actions. She ducked and weaved swiftly through the crowd, moving quickly towards her target. There was a tall, grotesquely fat alien standing next to Peter, nursing an enormous drink with some kind of weird steam coming off of it. Gamora barged straight into him, taking care to knock his arm in just the right way to ensure he spilt his drink all over Peter.

Her first instinct had been to send it flying all over the girl Peter had been flirting with, but last second tactical thinking made her change her mind. Peter would have inevitably insisted on making a chivalrous show of inviting her back to the Milano to clean herself up – which in turn would have inevitably led to other things.

‘Sorry,’ said Gamora to the green-scaled fat man, thrusting a few units at him to cover the cost of his drink. She grabbed Peter roughly by the arm, her hand clamped firmly over the spot where the stranger had been caressing him just a few moments earlier.

‘What the hell?’ Peter said. In her haste Gamora had spilt a great deal more of the drink over him than she’d intended. It was dripping off his face.

‘You smell like a brewery,’ she told him. ‘Come with me.’

She dragged a spluttering and complaining Peter away. He looked back wistfully over his shoulder at the woman he’d been talking to, but to Gamora’s intense relief simply resigned himself to his fate and let her haul him away. She loosened her tight grip a little, but still kept a firm hold of him as she steered them through the settlement’s cramped streets.

Peter let her lead the way. She found his easy acquiescence to her manhandling oddly pleasing.

‘Great, it’s all over my coat,’ Peter complained as they walked. ‘And Jesus, it’s _sticky as hell_ , what _was_ that guy drinking?’

‘We should return to the ship,’ Gamora said briskly. ‘It’s in your hair as well,’ she added.

‘What?’ Peter said, touching his hair gingerly, only to find most of it stuck together in clumps. ‘Oh great. Just perfect. What even happened in there anyway? You knocked that guy’s drink all over me.’

‘I slipped,’ said Gamora.

‘ _You_ slipped?’ Peter said disbelievingly.

‘It happens,’ Gamora said defensively. It was a lie. She hadn’t slipped since she was fourteen years old.

Peter complained almost the entire way back to the Milano. He kept on fussing at his hair, despite Gamora’s repeated attempts to tell him he was only making it worse. By the time they made it back to the ship the whole mess was so bad that it was clear a shower wasn’t going to cut it. Whatever the drink had been, it had somehow _congealed_ into a thick, sticky substance that a now extremely irritated Peter compared to something called ‘treacle’.

In the end, there was nothing else for it. Peter sat on the floor while Gamora sat on a chair behind him, carefully massaging a very mild solvent into the thick gunk. Slowly, bit by bit, the strands of hair started to come apart as the mystery syrup dissolved.

‘Who _was_ that guy?’ Peter demanded. ‘Who the hell drinks something like that? That is not normal digestion man. Not friggin’ normal.’

‘It is coming out,’ Gamora reassured him, carefully carding her fingers through the mess. It was, but slowly.

‘At least the others aren’t here,’ Peter muttered sullenly, slumping back against Gamora’s legs. ‘Rocket would never shut up about this.’

They sat in silence after that. Gamora had put on one of Peter’s tapes in an effort to lighten his mood. It played quietly in the background. Carefully, and with infinite patience, she teased the odd substance out of Peter’s hair.

After a while Peter’s head lolled lazily to one side until it rested on Gamora’s knee. His eyes had drifted shut, and he looked half asleep. She’d already managed to remove the remnants of the drink from his hair, but there was something pleasantly relaxing about running her hands through the blonde scruff. So she kept quiet, and let Peter believe she was still working.

She suspected she ought to feel guilty. After all, she was responsible for spilling the drink all over him. But instead she just felt very satisfied. She’d successfully managed to prevent Peter from having sex with some brazen stranger he’d met in a bar, and had even managed to inadvertently steer events so that he was dozing quietly against her leg while she ran her hands through his hair.

No, Gamora didn’t feel guilty at all.

…

Gamora had found Peter physically desirable since the first moment she’d laid eyes on him. But she’d learnt a long time ago to ignore sudden impulses like that. And then she’d discovered his habit of making himself sexually available to anyone showing even a passing interest, and she’d tried to dismiss her attraction to him from her mind completely. She would not be another notch on Peter’s Quill’s already very crowded bedpost.

But the attraction refused to be dismissed so easily. In fact, it intensified over time. Increasingly Gamora caught herself staring at him, sometimes without even realising she was doing it. She was unused to such lapses in self-control, and at first she’d been angry with herself. And then she’d simply allowed herself to enjoy it.

It struck her at the strangest times. Oh, there were moments when it was absolutely impossible to ignore him. On a ship as small and crowded as the Milano there were always going to be times when you saw significantly more of someone than you’d intended, and if Gamora’s gaze lingered a little when that someone happened to be Peter, well that was entirely her business. No grown woman with a well-developed interest in the male sex would not take those extra few seconds to enjoy the view.

But other times, she was at a complete loss to understand what drew her to him. He’d fallen asleep one night at the Milano’s controls, curled up in the loose, comfortable clothes she knew he usually slept in. She’d slipped silently into the cockpit, and settled quietly into the co-pilot’s chair. She’d watched Peter breathing, eyes following the gentle rise and fall of his chest, and tracing the jutting lines of his collarbones just visible above the loose neck of his shirt.  

Then, out of nowhere, the sudden urge had come over her to climb on top of him. To press kisses to his exposed throat, and slip her hands up underneath his shirt. To press Peter down into the pilot’s chair until he was utterly helpless beneath her, all hers and nobody’s else’s.

So intense and vivid was the fantasy that Gamora only barely noticed when Groot appeared in the doorway. He stopped there, looking slowly between the two of them.

‘I am Groot,’ he said at last, in what Gamora’s thought was an unnecessarily knowing way for a talking tree. He then turned and walked away, leaving her feeling uncomfortably like a small child caught with their hand in the candy jar.

…

On Votong, a horrible little world at the ass end of the galaxy, Peter got himself stabbed through the torso with a seven-inch blade.

Votong was nothing special. In fact, it was barely even habitable. The atmosphere supported carbon based life, but was so thin that both Peter and Rocket required additional oxygen to function normally on its surface. The surface was barren, supporting only the most basic of plant life. It was way out in the uncharted systems, and nobody gave a damn about it. Which was probably what had attracted the smugglers.

The Guardians had been hired by a rich conglomerate of art collectors. They’d been planning to open a museum on Xandar, to show off the very best of their combined collections to the viewing public. But someone had managed to intercept the rarest and most valuable of the collection while it was on route, and made off with millions of units worth of the best art in the galaxy.

The reward for its safe return was substantial. They’d managed to track the thieves down to Votong, in particular a small underground complex near the planet’s southern pole.

Things had started off according to the plan. Rocket had disabled the alarms, they’d snuck in through an emergency hatch, and quietly taken out the perimeter guard. The stolen artwork was located on a cargo ship docked in a central hanger, all secured and ready to go. All they had to do was sneak on-board and steal the ship.

It should have been simple. But then Drax punched a man through a wall, and it all went to hell.

As usual, it came down to a pitched battle. Most of the gang were just thugs for hire, competent at best with a pistol and sloppy as hell in close quarters. The leader on the other hand, a towering seven foot tall Krylorian, was lethal. He had a weapon that shot explosive balls of plasma, which, when he’d unleashed it, had blown out huge chunks of the surrounding building. He didn’t seem to care if he took out his own goons as he tried to blast the Guardians into space dust.

Gamora knew that Peter had never received any kind of formal combat training, past some basic lessons in marksmanship. All his fighting skill had been acquired the old fashioned way – by taking beatings until he learnt to fight back. And in some ways that was just fine – Gamora had seen plenty of highly-trained warriors hesitate when thrown into the kind of vicious, scrappy melees that Peter thrived in.

It did mean though that his hand-to-hand skills weren’t as sharp as they could be. At first it didn’t seem to matter. Peter got behind the Krylorian and managed to land a perfect shot on the hand wielding the plasma blaster. The Krylorian howled, rounding on Peter. Using his still smoking hand, he drew a long, serrated knife from his belt. The edge gleamed menacingly.

It would have been fine, would have counted for absolutely nothing, except at that exact moment the explosives that Rocket had rigged to cover their escape went off. The blast rocked the base, making dust rain down on all the fighters. The shockwave knocked Peter clean off his feet, sending him sprawling to the ground.

The Krylorian didn’t hesitate to lunge.

Peter managed to dodge the first thrust by rolling. He managed to avoid the second in the same way. But the third time he was not so lucky.

Gamora was fifty paces or so away when it happened, busy dispatching three fools to their untimely ends. She was helpless to do anything as the blade tore through Peter’s leather duster, and straight between his ribs. It went in with a sickening noise.

The Krylorian grinned, but he had little time to enjoy his victory. Gamora was on him in a whirlwind of fury, unstoppable and merciless. She wanted to pound him to a pulp until he screamed for mercy, wanted to make him suffer, wanted to rip out his lungs. She wanted to _hurt_ him in a way that she hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone since she’d been forced to watch Thanos murder her entire family.

But there was no time for that. Peter was bleeding on the ground, the life slipping out of him with every passing second. She ducked under the first wild swing of the Krylorian’s knife, and with practised ease grasped his head in both hands and twisted until she heard the snap.

The body fell limply to the ground. She paid it no mind.

All her attention was consumed by Peter. She could hear him gasping wetly for breath underneath his mask. She wanted to take it off, to see his face, but she firmly resisted the urge. The extra oxygen it was providing would help keep him alive.

Drax appeared, knocking one of the thieves out of the way with one mighty blow from his fist. He stared helplessly down at Peter, before raising his gaze to Gamora.

‘Find me some medical supplies,’ she snapped at him. Close by Groot and Rocket were dispatching the very last of the gang in a hail of bellowing and gunfire. ‘They must have had some. Bring them to me.’

Gamora learnt some things about Terrans that day, things which she would have much rather never known. The vivid scarlet colouring of their blood, the sticky warmth of it, and the way their skin grew steadily paler the more of it they lost. By the time Drax returned with what she needed, Peter had faded badly. His heartbeat was faint and his breathing shallow.

Later on, when they were all back on the Milano, and Peter had been stabilized, Gamora sat watch over him. She’d given him a sedative to keep him unconscious and out of pain. He wasn’t in immediate danger anymore, but she’d told Rocket to take them to Knowhere as fast as the ship could manage. They’d pay a doctor there to look over him properly.

She held Peter’s hand, watching the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. She knew he would laugh the whole thing off once he returned to health, but he’d been very, very lucky. He probably had the Krylorian’s ignorance of human biology to thank for his life. If the knife had been just an inch further to the left, it would have gone straight through his heart.

As it was, there would just be another scar to add to Peter’s collection. Sitting in the chair next to his bunk, Gamora surveyed them. There were far too many. The man was vulnerable in close quarter combat, and it showed. It was a weakness that would have to be corrected. She would not allow him to be hurt like this again.

That, more than anything else, was her overriding emotion. Peter could not be hurt like this again. It was a mad, irrational sentiment and she knew it. Their lives were dangerous. They consorted with thugs, criminals, and murderers. They _were_ thugs, criminals, and murderers. They took huge risks, crazy risks, and none of them would have had it any other way.

From a very young age Gamora had learned not to get attached to the people around her. Any of them could be killed at a moment’s notice – in battle, or by finding themselves on the wrong end of Thanos’s wrath. The Guardians – her _friends_ – were the first people she’d allowed herself to really, truly care about.

But Peter, more than any of the others, she felt responsible for. For some reason Gamora felt like it was up to _her_ to look out for him, to protect him. And to do grievous bodily harm to anyone attempting to obstruct her.

…

Just as she’d predicted, once Peter was fully recovered he tried to shrug the whole thing off as though it had just been a minor blip, rather than a major brush with death.

‘Look, it’s no big deal, okay?’ he insisted. ‘Believe me, I’ve had worse. _You’ve_ tried to do worse to me.’

‘I have not,’ Gamora said, offended at the very implication.

‘Do you not remember how we met?’ said Peter. ‘Because I do. In fact, I very distinctly remember you kicking me in the face.’

‘She kicked you in the face?’ piped up Rocket from across the room, poking his head up from a mess of wires and circuitry. ‘Hah, I wish I’d seen that. Hey Gamora, kick him in the face again so I can watch.’

‘Nobody will kick anybody in the face,’ Gamora snapped.

‘The joyless wonder strikes again,’ sighed Rocket, resuming work on whatever device he was currently trying to cobble together from junk and spare parts.

‘You need training,’ Gamora said firmly. ‘Proper hand-to-hand combat training. You can’t just shoot your way out of every situation Peter.’

‘Hey, it’s worked out okay for me so far!’

‘Has it?’ Gamora said, staring pointedly at Peter’s chest, right at the spot where the knife had pierced one of his lungs.

‘I’m still here, aren’t I?’ Peter protested. He slumped down into a chair and looked petulantly up at her. Gamora ignored him.

‘Barely,’ she told him. ‘You need training.'

‘I don’t.’

‘You do.’

‘I’m not doing it.’

‘Yes, you are.’

…

To be begin with, Gamora had Peter spar with Drax. That way she could watch from the side-lines and offer instruction. It was easier to spot where he was going wrong from a distance, to note his weak spots and the openings that he missed.

On the other hand, every time Drax struck Peter she had to forcibly smother the urge to kill him. Of course Drax was pulling his punches, but it was still enough to send Peter reeling every time he was hit. There would be bruises.

Gamora managed an entire fifteen minutes of completely fruitless observation, before she couldn’t handle it anymore.

‘Stop,’ she shouted loudly, as Peter collapsed onto the mat, groaning and with his arms wrapped around his stomach. Drax, who’d just landed a particularly sharp jab, looked indignant.

‘What I am I doing incorrectly?’ he demanded, as a wheezing Peter hauled himself unsteadily to his feet.

‘Nothing,’ said Gamora. ‘It’s just…’ she searched quickly for a credible lie. ‘I’ve seen all I need to see. He’s completely hopeless…’

‘Hey!’

 ‘…we will just have to begin with the basics.’

Truthfully, Peter wasn’t nearly so bad as she’d made him out to be. He learnt quickly too. After a short time Gamora found herself to be very satisfied with his progress.

She also found herself _looking forward_ to their little training sessions. She took the opportunity to insist on them whenever she could, whenever they had access to a little more space than the Milano allowed.

When they sparred, it was just her and Peter. During that time, he brought out a side of herself that she usually kept carefully concealed. They teased each other mercilessly, they bickered constantly, and they shared some of the less depressing stories about their past. Most of Peter’s anecdotes seemed to involve supremely ill-advised sexual indiscretions.

‘… and then her boyfriend came in, and let me tell you after that it got really weird…’

‘… it turned out they were triplets! I mean come on, in my defence what were the odds and…’

‘… and then we all woke up in bed together. Man, I really wish I could remember that night…’

Every time after hearing the details of one of these staggeringly sordid misadventures, Gamora took great satisfaction in swiftly pinning Peter to the floor and holding him there until he gave in.

…

They posed as potential buyers at a black market arms fair, held on a space station infamous for its criminal connections. Shady types from across the entire breadth of the galaxy were in attendance, but they were only looking for one. A warlord who’d recently branched out into slaving in order to finance her bloodlust.

Every single person in the room was highly dangerous, the buyers and the vendors. The woman they were looking for hadn’t yet shown her face, and Gamora was currently trying to subtly fish for information on her whereabouts. It was getting late, and many deals had already been struck. The drinks were flowing, and there was a convivial mood in the air. Apparently even ruthless homicidal maniacs liked to let their hair down and relax.

Gamora sipped at her drink, a very expensive Kree liquor, pretending to down much more of it than she actually was. Her gaze swept the room, searching for their target. Instead her eyes landed on Peter, who’d gotten himself wedged between two _very_ dangerous looking people.

‘Look, it’s not that I’m not flattered and all, because I definitely am, but…’ Peter rambled as he tried, and failed, to extract himself.

There was a broad shouldered man stood behind him, pressed right up against Peter’s back. He was covered in thick, black tattoos and had a few noticeable cybernetic implants. Plastering herself against Peter’s front was a woman. She had the same kind of tattoos as the man, and Gamora noticed that her teeth had all been filed into sharp points. Both of them were heavily armed.

‘Come on now sweetheart,’ the woman drawled, leaning in so that her mouth was just brushing the skin of Peter’s neck. ‘Don’t be so stubborn. We’ll show you a good time.’

‘Wow, uh, thanks, but I really have to be going…’

‘Not so fast,’ said the man, crowding in even closer so that Peter was well and truly trapped. ‘My wife always gets what she wants. Now, why don’t we take this somewhere more private?’

‘There you are,’ said Gamora loudly as she arrived on the scene. Peter looked desperately grateful to see her.

The two mercs harassing Peter backed off a little, eyeing Gamora suspiciously. She ignored them, slipping gracefully between them to wrap a proprietary arm around Peter’s waist.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded. ‘I told you to stick close.’ She stared Peter straight in the face, trying to communicate silently that he should play along.

‘Right!’ he said. ‘Yes. Yes, you did say that. Sorry.’

‘Who are you?’ said the female merc, glowering at Gamora. This close Gamora could smell the stink of alcohol on both her and her husband. They were both drunk, which only made them all the more unpredictable. In a straight fight they probably wouldn’t pose much of a challenge, but it would certainly call a great deal of attention to Peter and Gamora. Attention they were trying to avoid.

‘It doesn’t matter who I am,’ Gamora said in a cold, authoritative tone. She tightened her grip around Peter, pulling him in so that he was flush against her side. ‘What matters is, he’s mine. Go find someone else to paw at.’

The woman’s lips curled back, and her hand strayed to the pistol on her hip. In turn Gamora reached up and put her own on the grip of the blade strapped to her back. She could have the merc’s hand clean off before the drunken fool had even gotten her finger on the trigger.

‘Come on,’ said the male, wrapping an arm around his wife’s shoulders. ‘His scrawny alien ass ain’t worth it.’

The merc scowled, but removed her hand from her gun and let her husband lead her away.

‘Scrawny?’ hissed Peter in Gamora’s ear. ‘What did he mean scrawny? My ass is not scrawny.’

‘ _That’s_ what you’re worried about?’ Gamora shot back. She still had her arm locked firmly around’s Peter’s waist. If he’d noticed, he hadn’t given any indication. She left it there.

‘I just want to know what he meant,’ Peter insisted. ‘I’m just saying, it’s always had rave reviews before okay?’

‘Shut up, Peter,’ Gamora said. She stepped forward, pulling him along with her. To her surprise, he allowed it, leaning into her. He was a head taller than she was, but her cybernetic implants meant she was by far the stronger.

‘Hey, do _you_ think it’s scrawny?’ Peter continued.

Gamora sighed in exasperation, and turned her head to look up at him. Then she saw the playful gleam in his eye, and the way his mouth was threatening to twitch into a grin.

‘Very scrawny,’ she said, unable to stop herself smiling. She patted it, surprising Peter into a laugh. If she let her hand linger possessively for a couple of seconds, then nobody mentioned it.

…

After a particularly lucrative heist, in which they stole a hell of a lot of money from some very bad people, they all decided to take some time out on Knowhere to lay low and spend their units.

Gamora in particular felt herself in dire need of an escape from the smell of sweat and engine oil that permeated every inch of the Milano. She used some of her share to rent out a little apartment in one of the nicer (a deeply relative term when it came to Knowhere) sectors of the colony. It was only mildly decrepit, and she only had to threaten to murder one drug dealer as she settled in.

She’d been looking forward to some solitude. Thanos had encouraged independence in his daughters. It had taken her a long time to adjust to living with other people, especially people with such large personalities, and especially in so small a space. She wouldn’t have traded her friends for anything, but there was no denying that they could all be incredibly annoying.

And so it was to her immense surprise that, after one day, she’d had enough of being alone. She wanted to know where Peter was. Knowhere was sprawling and dangerous - although he was certainly no stranger to criminal activity, and was probably fine somewhere. Almost certainly.

She messaged him on their comm link, inviting him over to practise hand-to-hand with her. It was, she told herself firmly, definitely _not_ an excuse to check in on him.

A short while later, the control panel on the apartment door chimed. It was Peter. He had a black eye.

‘Hi,’ he said brightly.

‘It has been less than _one day_ ,’ Gamora said.

‘What, this?’ said Peter, pointing at his discoloured, swollen eye. ‘It’s nothing. I ran into some old friends. And when I say friends, I mean people I conned.’

‘I have no idea how you survived so many years on your own,’ Gamora said, standing aside to let him in.

Peter’s unarmed combat skills had improved considerably since Gamora had started training him. Normally they fell quickly into an easy rhythm. But this time something was different. Peter held back, deliberately refusing to engage with her. There was an impish gleam in his eye. He was up to something, trying to provoke _her_ into making some kind of first move.

He dodged back out of her reach, and then ducked swiftly to the side to avoid her rapid countermove. He didn’t strike out, didn’t attempt to land any blows of his own. Instead he stayed carefully just out of Gamora’s reach, always just one hair’s breadth away.

She found it immensely frustrating. Peter, on the other hand, seemed to be _enjoying_ it, if the grin on his face was any indication.

Technically they hadn’t moved onto the advanced forms yet. But Peter’s grin was infuriating, and Gamora felt fully justified in the complicated feinting manoeuvre she pulled that let her get her hands round his arm. With a kick she swept his feet out from underneath him, twisting him round so that he landed flat on his back. Momentum sent her down with him, and she landed straddling his waist, pinning him firmly in place beneath her.

Peter laughed breathlessly.

Gamora stared down at him, feeling abruptly wrong-footed. A sudden bolt of possessive desire had struck her out of the blue, demanding and insistent. Here Peter was, helpless underneath her, and all laid out for the taking.

No, she told herself firmly, he was _not_. But she couldn’t help the hand that strayed to his neck, wrapping itself gently around the exposed column of his throat.

Peter went still. Embarrassed, Gamora went to draw her hand back.

‘No,’ Peter said at once. ‘You don’t, uh…’ He was flustered.

Gamora hesitated, and then carefully put her hand back, splaying her fingers wide. She noted the faint pink flush in Peter’s cheeks, the way his pupils had dilated, and the way he squirmed slightly beneath her.

Her other hand she slid into his hair, gripping it firmly and using it to hold his head in place. Peter didn’t fight against it, simply allowing her to tip his head further back so that his neck was even more fully exposed.

Slowly, giving him every opportunity to object, she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the place where Peter’s jaw curved sharply. He made a soft humming noise which she could _feel_ as it reverberated in his throat. He tried to move up against her, and she gently – but firmly – pressed him back to the floor.

She kissed him again, on the edge of the black and blue bruise which marred his face. And then at last she kissed him properly, on the mouth. Whatever iron self-control she’d held over herself until this point melted away. She kissed him hungrily, and Peter responded in kind. She even let him have a little leeway to move, allowing him to rest his hands on her thighs.

Some time passed, Gamora – usually hyper-aware of the world around her – had no idea how much. All her attention was consumed by Peter. Her heart was beating fast, and her skin felt two sizes too small. She _wanted_ him, she was about to _have_ him, and nothing was going to stop her.

Reluctantly she drew back. ‘Get up,’ she ordered Peter. ‘We’re moving to the bed.’

He stared up at her, dazed. ‘You know, you’re actually going to have to get off me if you want-’

He trailed off when she reached down, took hold of his collar, and hauled him upright. He was going to the bed, even if she had to carry him there.

…

On the last day before they were due to meet the others back at the Milano, Peter rolled over and pressed his face into the crook of Gamora’s neck.

‘You’ve broken me,’ he complained. ‘I’ll never walk the same again.’

Gamora laughed, bringing up one hand to drag through Peter’s messed up hair. She felt strange – but strange in a way she found she wanted to hold onto for as long as possible.

‘Perhaps I should have gone easy on you,’ she murmured, taking a fistful of his hair and tugging on it gently.

‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Peter said, squirming up to kiss her.


End file.
